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La Llorona film to be shown Nov. 3

A free public screening of a feature film about the La Llorona legend, "The Cry," is scheduled for 2 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 3, at the NMSU Creative Media Institute, Milton Hall Room 171. The director, Bernadine Santistevan, will be on hand to discuss the film.

The film is the final program in the Big Read series which celebrates themes in Rudolfo Anaya's novel "Bless Me, Ultima" and reading in general. The Big Read is sponosored by the NMSU Library, The Thomas Branigan Memorial Library and community partners.

"The Cry" is a contemporary supernatural thriller based on Santistevan's discoveries about La Llorona, the crying woman. In the U.S. alone, an estimated 28 to 35 million Hispanics have grown up with stories of this vengeful ghost, the majority of them in California, Texas, Arizona, New Mexico and Illinois.

The legend began with the companion of Hernan Cortes, La Malinche, who was said to have killed her children in about 1522 and was given the name La Llorona, according to the film's Web site at http://lallorona.com/. The first documented appearances of La Llorona after La Malinches' death occurred in Mexico City in 1550.

Sightings of La Llorona spread throughout the Americas. Modern women who have been found guilty of killing their children such as Susan Smith, Bernadine Flores and Andrea Yates also have become known by the name.

Santistevan was born and raised in a remote area of northern New Mexico. She studied engineering at Stanford Univeristy and business at the Wharton School of Business. She left her job as a venture capitalist in New York City to pursue her dream of making "The Cry."